Banking’s Biggest M+A Conference (#AOBA14)

In a few days, I’ll be taking to the stage with our editor, Jack Milligan, to welcome some 830 attendees, guests and staff to Arizona and Bank Director’s annual Acquire or Be Acquired conference. Widely regarded as the financial industry’s premier M&A event, our 20th annual “AOBA”will bring bank CEOs, CFOs, Chairmen and outside directors to the Arizona Biltmore for three days of presentations, workshops, networking… and hopefully, some sun. These industry leaders join us to explore issues such as strategic alliances, investors’ interests and whether now is the right time to be a buyer — or a seller. I thought I’d tee up my blogging plans before leaving the snow and ice of Washington D.C. (see below) for the warmth of the Southwest.

Acquire or Be Acquired

On the merger front, one of the big themes over the past few years has been unrealistic expectations between buyers and sellers of banks. Not surprisingly, sellers think pricing is too low and buyers think sellers’ expectations are too high. Now, when managed effectively, mergers and acquisitions present necessary and lucrative opportunities — and this particular conference affords bankers and board members the chance to “go deep” into the M&A process in order to represent and protect the interests of their particular bank. I’ll be spilling a lot of digital ink on a number of financial, legal, accounting and social issues facing bank executives and board members. Today’s post simply tees up some of the social tools I’m going to use to keep folks current with the discussions.

Twitter
First and foremost, @bankdirector has a loyal following and does a great job putting info’ out for a bank’s officers and directors. For this event, we’ve set #AOBA14 as the conference hashtag. I’ll be tweeting under @aldominick. Some of my colleagues will be as well; notably, our editor, Jack Milligan via @BankDirectorEd, Managing Editor, Naomi Snyder, with @NaomiSnyder and our Publisher, Kelsey Weaver, with @BankDirectorPub.